The present invention is related to vacuum tubes in general, and, more particularly, to a multi-dimensional thin film tube suitable for use in a high temperature, high radiation environment that conventional silicon semiconductor devices, for example, cannot tolerate.
Vacuum tubes of a ceramic-to-metal construction have long been used in the past for this purpose, but their size, weight and power consumption are all too excessive for large scale applications, such as, for example, a radiation tolerant computer.
More recently, use has been made of one-dimensional integrated vacuum tube structures; however, these are found to be less efficient and of a lower transconductance than is obtainable with tubes having the multi-dimensional structure of the present invention.